


vast

by CalicoThunder



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Gen, Keith case study, and made it into this, i took a five second scene, snapshot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-21
Updated: 2016-12-21
Packaged: 2018-09-10 20:26:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 700
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8937928
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CalicoThunder/pseuds/CalicoThunder
Summary: Remember that one moment in episode one where Keith tries to secure the Red Lion, but he ends up taking out some drones (and himself) with the airlock and floating in space for a moment before his Lion comes to get him?
This is about that.





	

_ This is how I die.  _

 

Space, Keith realizes, is very, very big. 

 

As a child, when he’d spoken of flying with the stars, being among them- this wasn’t what he meant. 

 

A huge, lurking, metal hull is his only anchor, the only way he knows he’s spinning, floating, falling and spilling out into the vastness of an infinite black, peppered with stars. 

 

Watching the debris come for him had been the scariest part- locking eyes with the Red Lion as she watched him fall, out of the hole he created to save her. Her eyes were a sharp yellow, glowing faintly inside her giant forcefield. 

 

He remembers thinking,  _ maybe Allura was wrong. Maybe I’m not her Red Paladin.  _

 

Because if he was, wouldn’t the Lion have saved him by now?

 

The first piece of debris hit him hard; one hand’s grip on the edge slipped away completely. 

 

Maybe he’d been too demanding. “ _ I am your Paladin.”  _

 

Hell, if the Lion’s are supposed to be reflections of their Paladins, then Keith felt queasy at the notion that  _ he  _ wouldn’t have liked to be yelled at like that. 

 

What choice had he had? The drones would have taken him down, secured the Lion. He  _ had  _ to open the airlock, there'd been no other way. 

 

_ There’s always another way,  _ Shiro’s voice said, and he’d cursed his mind as the second chunk of debris came loose, knocking him into space with a faulty pirouette. 

 

The first few seconds are the worst, by far- he can feel the cold seeping into this new armor, but he can’t feel any pressure. For a moment, he’s not really sure if he’s even existing until he hears the sounds of his own screams bouncing around in the glass encasement of his helmet. 

 

He looks to the right.

 

There’s exactly one infinity of stars in space; Keith would know. He knows because he sees them all right there, laughing and twinkling as if to say,  _ You’re one of us, now.  _

 

And suddenly he realizes that this isn’t what he wants. He doesn’t want to be among the stars- he wants to be trapped, lonely in a desert, purposeless as a spirit and soulless as a skeleton because he’s bitten off more than he can chew, here. 

 

He’s  _ overwhelmed,  _ and that scares him. 

 

He looks to the left. 

 

_ My measurements may have been off,  _ he thinks, because there might be a few more than infinity stars if all the galaxies and nebulae are anything to go by. They swirl too, floating forever with a fate Keith knows he’s just been doomed to; the difference being that  _ they _ don’t have a problem with it. 

 

In the span of a millisecond, resent takes over his body. 

 

How? How wasn’t he good enough? The best pilot of his generation behind Takashi Shirogane. No ship- human, alien, sentient, or Voltron Lion- had the right to deny him the controls. 

 

_ I am your Paladin,  _ he thinks, though this time it’s angry. 

 

He damns the Princess, too- her wild war stories and fanatic destiny that she forced them-  _ forced them _ \- into with the pressure of saving a whole universe. The idea itself was near impossible. 

 

(Keith doesn’t back down from a challenge.)

 

He chances another look, a final look, at the Galra ship, the airlock he fell from, where the Red Lion sits stubbornly to wait for her  _ real _ Paladin. 

 

_ This is how I die.  _

 

_ What a stupid way to die, _ he thinks,  _ ironic, poetic, and stupid. _

 

No one on Earth could’ve guessed that Keith Kogane would die from falling into space. 

 

( _ Can you even fall in space? Or is it floating? Spilling? Falling, but upwards. _ )

 

He screams louder when the Red Lion emerges from the battleship, flying straight towards him with what he swears is a smirk, as if to say,  _ You passed your test.  _

 

He screams louder to mask the relief he feels as she comes for him, to mask the finality with which he falls into her pilot seat. 

 

_ I am your Paladin.  _

 

It’s not angry. 

 

_ And I,  _ she answers,  _ am your Lion.  _

 

It’s not angry. 

 

“Good kitty,” he says as he takes the controls, ready to fly with the stars.

 

“Let’s roll.” 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading!!!!!


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